The Fracture War
by Chridy
Summary: When Zarek Industrial blow up one of the USR's supply moons, the war that ensues threatens to plunge the galaxy into chaos. However, for one crew of mercenaries this is just another job, but as the war gathers momentum and the other corporations join the mad scramble for power and wealth, they soon find that there is more at stake than mere survival.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: I started playing Fractured Space recently and think it's good and has great potential, but it has no story because of how early in development it is. So, I decided to make one using the characters and ships present.

I believe this has the honour of being the first ever Fractured Space fanfic (correct me if I'm wrong), which, to be frank, is pretty cool. This is also my first published story, so expect plenty of noob mistakes as I get the hang of writing. Constructive criticism is welcome and wanted as I want to know what's good, bad and wrong so that I can improve my skills.

Thanks for reading!

* * *

><p>Everyone says the war began when Zarek Industrial blew up Ganymede, one of United Space Research's supply moons. Even the corporations said so in their statements, using it as the reason to officially declare war on each other and I admit it's a convincing theory as nothing says "screw you" quite like blowing up someone's moon. But it's bullshit. This war started like any other corporate deal; in a room somewhere on comfortable chairs with handshakes and smiles whilst the money flowed.<p>

Of course it was never explicitly called a war in those meetings - that would imply they had some measure of responsibility - and sure, they may not have known the full cost of what they were doing but they damn well knew the consequences of their actions. And they won't stop now because to do so would be like admitting they were wrong or that they are weak, inexcusable flaws, but the primary reason is that it's more profitable to keep it going. I guarantee that it will be over in a day as soon as it became unprofitable.

How did we get to this state, you ask? Well, centuries of greed and ambition have led to only the most ruthless companies surviving and any weakness is pounced on by everyone like sharks on a wounded whale, quickly and efficiently taking it apart and feasting on the juicy deals and contracts within. At first the governments didn't care because the fierce competition kept prices low. When rumours of violence began to swirl, there was brief resistance from the politicians but they soon started getting richer and quieter. By the time the war started, the governments were powerless to stop them as they'd merely been puppets for the manufacturers for decades and had no power over them at all.

Listen to me, going on about the corruption in the system when they're paying me too, irony at its finest. In my defence though, I'm being paid a wage for an actual job instead of a bribe. My name is Marie-Anne Moreau, and I am a mercenary currently working for Zarek Industrial as a Captain in their fleet.

]-[

Zarek Industrial approached me a few weeks before the destruction of Ganymede with the job offer of a lifetime - get paid stupid amounts of money to do what I do best, fighting in space, protecting their interests from other parties as long as I was able, along with a few other benefits that come with working for a mega-corporation. I've been living on ships all my life, piloting for half that time and captain of various ships for over twenty years. So you could say I know a thing or two about spaceships. Makes the job easy right? Yeah, that's what I thought too, which is why I accepted the offer before really thinking it through. Boy do I regret that.

At first it was pretty boring, just setting up my account, life insurance, blood tests and the billion other boring little details that companies feel are necessary before they start paying you and that only take a few hours to complete the forms but weeks for them to pass through all the bureaucrats. Then I was packed off to one of their outposts and research stations on the ice planet Persephone II in the Hades IV system, located in the arse-end of civilisation, to learn and acclimatise to my new ship and crew.

Once we got there, absolutely nothing of interest happened for three weeks. Naturally, we got bored, so we decided to supplement our cheap rations with proper food 'confiscated' or taken as payment from traders entering our system. We were good, but kept it low-key, never taking more than we thought we could get away with as we knew what could happen if Zarek found out about our little games and activities. But, we weren't caught and when the war started no-one cared anymore as long as we didn't attack Zarek ships.

]-[

The first we heard of the attack on Ganymede was when we were watching IntsteNews and the reports started coming in. I think everyone remembers the moment they heard the news, and the statements by Zarek and the USR are etched into my mind forever. Not because they're any good, but because of what they meant. It meant that two of the largest corporations were at war and everyone without enormous power or distance from them was going to get sucked into the fight. Of course, working for Zarek meant that we were going to be the first dragged in, but at least we were being paid for the privilege.

The news broadcast hadn't even finished when our comms system was slammed with orders from command and messages from everyone with the authority to broadcast that far. The orders were short and simple; protect the system from intruders and destroy or capture any enemies of the corporation, which, naturally, was in another document sent separately. This was it, this was what we were being paid to do and by God were we going to do it right.

If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's the fact that I run the tightest ships around and have the best-trained crews available, or if not then I make damn sure they become the best. They may dislike me, hate me even, but if you're in a bad situation you need to be able to rely on your crew to make as few mistakes as possible, follow orders well or even correct your mistakes without needing approval every time so that you can delegate tasks whilst you focus on the big picture.

In the time I'd been in command of them, I'd pushed my new crew to improve their already considerable skills further until they were as good as they could be and drilled them to instinctively react to orders and commands. They didn't have the confidence or flexibility to act on their own initiative yet and their teamwork needed some, well, work, but they were getting there and a little trial by fire would help matters greatly. So when the orders were quickly followed by information that vanguard elements of a USR fleet had jumped to the system's edge and were en route to Zarek's system HQ whilst reinforcements were still hours or even days away, we just turned around and started speeding across the darkness of space. We were about to become their worst nightmare.

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><p><em>Interstellar News, more commonly known as InsteNews, is a government funded and run news agency that broadcasts to every known inhabited planet in the galaxy.<em>


	2. Chapter 1

AN: New year, new chapter! This took me a lot longer than I thought it would take, especially as I wasn't happy with the first draft and rewrote a lot of it. But I'm fairly happy with it now and decided to publish it before getting stuck on endless tweaking. Comments and criticism are welcome to help improve it further.

I also thought I'd take this opportunity to point you towards my profile, where you'll find a link to a picture of the star system the story is set in, which is called the Hades IV system after its star. Unfortunately, I couldn't fit in everything into the picture, so for now it's just the star and planets on show, but at some point I will try to make a better map.

Thanks for reading!

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><p>Gregorii Durov, our pilot, performed his job perfectly and jumped us right behind Persephone II's moon Cerberus without a problem, keeping us hidden from the USR fleet's sensors and after a little maneuvering we were ready to slingshot around the moon and ambush them. Surprise was our best chance at survival, so we had to use every advantage we could get.<p>

On the bridge, the tension was cloyingly thick as we watched the USR ships crawl towards their target - and towards us. It didn't help that we were outnumbered five-to-one and that we were creeping around the moon towards them as well in order to give them as little time to react as possible. In addition to all that, we'd only had a few weeks to learn and get used to the ship but had had no experience of using it in a real fight - piratical raids on merchants don't count - so this was going to be a test of our raw skill, a test that could kill us all. No pressure then.

As we edged around Cerberus, we accessed the satellites surrounding Persephone to find out what we were up against. To our surprise and growing horror, their small fleet wasn't a squadron of patrol vessels or small fighters, it had a Sniper, two Assassins and a Flagship.

That was not good.

Even though I _sometimes_ skirted the law and _occasionally_ came into conflict with the authorities, these were warships and I had never encountered or worked on one before. I'd only heard about them in rumours and bar gossip, which sounded outlandish and exaggerated but there was always the common belief that a Flagship on one side usually ensured victory for that side as they're almost impossible to destroy.

The gravity of situation dawned on us then. The USR was _very_ serious about the war if they were sending warships, it wasn't a public squabble but a full-blown war. That was a terrifying thought as the potential for collateral shot up and our chances of surviving it shrunk to almost nothing. Although I didn't know why they'd sent such a heavily armed squadron to this backwater system, there wasn't anything particularly important here besides a small Zarek outpost, so the display of power was baffling.

I shook my head and put those thoughts to one side, refocusing my attention on the mission at hand.

Looking at the Sniper, it wasn't hard to tell what it could do - the name and the enormous guns give it away a little. Fortunately, it turned out that Dice Caplan, our tactical officer, had once served on one for a few years and was able to tell us a great deal what else it could do and (more importantly) what it couldn't do. She was also able to tell us the likely strategies the Sniper would use and how we could best counter them, which basically boiled down to "don't sit in front of its guns" but nonetheless gave us a great boost to our confidence.

Surprisingly, Gregorii revealed that he had encountered Assassins on a few occasions before and was able to give us a basic rundown of what they could do, including their ability to make themselves invisible to the naked eye and a good few of the standard sensors ships carried. Fortunately, even that had limitations we could abuse and tricks that could defeat it.

However, there was one last twist to play out as we were planning our attack. We'd asked our chief engineer, Goss, to tell us if our plan was feasible, but when he arrived he had a pair of worried-looking, low-level engineers trailing behind him. At Goss' gentle insistence, they explained that they'd been constructing ships for various manufacturers for years and that their best-paid job had been working on a Flagship as part of the crew installing the jump drive. It turns out that Flagships' jump drives are separated from the engines by a thin steel wall. The designers and builders knew about the weakness, but for one reason or another they couldn't or wouldn't fix it and instead just made the armour on the rear of the ship thicker to compensate and designed the engines to be able to continue powering the ship even if most of them are damaged.

Now this was useful information. Rather than being a limitation in its ability, it was an actual weakness in the ship. We thanked the engineers and they left, looking relieved. Our plan only needed a few tweaks to take advantage of this development and before we knew it, we were ready. Half an hour later, the entire crew knew what was coming and what they were supposed to do and we were all prepared for what we were about to attempt.

With our plan and crew ready, we waited and hoped it would be enough.

]-[

It didn't take long for the USR ships to reach the designated point, they were travelling fast and our planning had taken up most of the time we had.

We kicked our engines up to full throttle and started speeding towards them, the flare of power obscured but not completely hidden by Cerberus' thin atmosphere. However, crawling around the moon had gotten us pretty close to the fleet, relatively speaking, and they didn't spot us whilst we got up to speed before cutting the thrusters, swiftly and silently drifting towards the enemy.

When they eventually detected us and the Sniper began turning, we brought the thrusters back online and kicked them up to full power, racing towards them. Seconds before the Sniper had finished turning and aiming at us, we activated our jump drive and blinked across the distance so that we were suddenly behind both the Sniper and the rest of the fleet.

We didn't waste any time and began shooting almost as soon as we blinked, still moving forwards to give that little extra force to every shot and make it a little easier to hit the target, which happened to be the Flagship's engines. We focussed everything on those engines and ignored everything else as the Flagship was the biggest threat to the Zarek outpost on the planet's surface and therefore was our priority target.

Our first volley must have gotten lucky as it knocked almost half of their engines out. We redirected our aim to target the same spot and began hammering it with cannon fire, drilling through the armour and machinery until the second volley of missiles punched through and caused explosions to ripple along the entire back end of the ship, shutting down the remaining engines.

By now the Sniper had almost completed its circle to face us again and the Assassins had cloaked sometime after we'd blinked, making me very nervous about where they could be. Knowing we would lose a straight fight, I ordered Gregorii to get us out of there before we got caught in a crossfire and so we could attack again from another direction. In the brief time it took for the jump drive to go from primed to active, our cannons and missiles had reloaded again so that we could fire a final, parting shot as we jumped.

Just as we started jumping, warnings suddenly splashed across every screen as the Assassins decloaked and fired at the same time as the Sniper took its shot.

]-[

We dropped back into real space in orbit around Zeus IX a second later and immediately scanned the battlezone and comm feeds to find out what was happening behind us. When the static finally cleared, we were stunned to see the Sniper turning away from a rapidly expanding cloud of wreckage that a minute before had been a Flagship and a pair of Assassins.

Before I continue, I need to explain a couple of things about jump drives, those marvellous mechanisms that allow us to travel faster than light. Don't worry, I won't be going into much detail as I don't know anything about how they work, this is just a quick interruption for the non-spacefarers out there to explain how those ships were destroyed.

The first thing you should know is that jump drives are huge - jump drives typically fill a third of the ship. Ours is slightly larger than that as it also has the ability to make small jumps, called "blinks", that don't require the full drive or the same power as full jumps. Why it's larger I don't know, Goss tried explaining it once but I couldn't understand a word of it.

The second thing you should know is that jump drives require enormous amounts of power to operate. A ship is fully operational using just 30 - 50% of its engine capacity, but uses its full capacity and more when running the jump drive, usually siphoning power away from other systems to meet the drive's power needs.

Naturally, with that much power flowing through them they are incredibly volatile and even with all the safeguards the manufacturers put in place, it's sometimes not enough. Failures in active jump drives are always catastrophic and depending on what stage of the jump a ship's at (warming up, jumping, etc.) the failures can range from merely annihilating the ship in a fiery explosion to even worse effects, such as opening micro black holes.

This is just a guess, but we think that our onslaught managed to get through the Flagship's armour and damage its jump drive. The crew must have panicked at the ambush and tried to jump away to safety, but the damaged jump drive couldn't cope and the resulting explosion tore the Flagship apart. The Assassins were too close and were caught in the explosion, the wreckage tearing them to shreds, but even if they had escaped being torn apart the EMP caused by the explosion would have wrecked them and left them at the mercy of gravity.

We all watched the wreckage fall in grim silence, painfully aware that those flaming shards could have been us if we'd jumped half a second later, or if they had fired a second earlier, or if any of a million other things had gone wrong. But they hadn't and we were alive to fight another day. So when the fires had died out, we checked when the reinforcements were due (imminently apparently) and celebrated as anyone else who'd survived near-death does - we got very drunk.

]-[

I woke up in my bunk the next morning with a pounding headache and a ringing in my ears. I lay there for a few moments to make sure my head wouldn't shatter when I got up, then swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and used the momentum to lift me up into a, somewhat slumped, sitting position.

"Oh God, I'm never drinking again," I vowed, clutching my head and grimacing at a spike of pain. "Lights. No! Arghh! Lights off! Off!" The pain as the light stabbed into my eyes made me feel sick and I had to wait another few minutes before I could move again. This time though, I left the lights off and fumbled in the dark until I found my way into the washroom. Once there, with only one stubbed toe, I opened the little cupboard above the sink and scrunched my eyes shut as the small lights inside turned on. When my eyes eventually adjusted to the low light I took some aspirin to help with the headache.

Using the little light, I gingerly washed and dressed, hoping the water would help wash away the hangover. It only took another 10 minutes or so to gather the courage to try turning the lights on again but this time I kept them on, forcing my eyes to get used to the light.

Thunder suddenly shook the room and made me stagger. It took a few seconds to realise it was just someone pounding the door. I stomped across my room and wrenched the door open, growling something vaguely threatening as I did.

My communications officer, Samuel Mosely, just looked at me for a moment before holding up a hand with a couple of little pills. "Here," he said gently, "these will help with the hangover."

"What are they?" I asked, in no mood to be pitied.

"Nothing serious, they just help get rid of the headache and fuzziness."

"What's in them?"

"It's a family recipe, if I told you I'd have to kill you." He said grinning, almost like he wasn't hungover. Bastard.

"Uh-huh," I grunted sarcastically.

"Okay, too early for jokes I see. They're just hangover cures from my family's pharmacy. They're better than anything else you'll find on the market, I promise you that."

He looked so earnest I just didn't have the heart to turn him down. After I took them, he said, "Captain, we need you on the bridge as soon as you're able."

"Not just here to help me through this tough time then, eh?" I sighed, "Fine, I'll be there in a minute when the ringing in my head's faded a bit."

"No Captain, we need you now."

I looked at him then, forcing my eyes to focus properly. That was when I noticed the red light was flashing behind him and that the ringing I could hear wasn't in my head, it was the klaxons sounding the alarm.

"What the hell's going on?" I demanded.

"Remember the Sniper we ran off yesterday?" I nodded. "It's back, and it's brought a couple of friends."

"Damn. Snipers too?" He nodded. "Damn and blast. Where are they now? No, hang on, tell me on the way." I ducked back into my room and put my boots on before hurrying towards the bridge, Samuel following close behind me.

"They were just passing Atlas when I came to get you. We think they've spotted us because they're headed straight for us. They'll be in effective range in about ten minutes."

"Fantastic," I muttered. "Why aren't we moving?"

"Goss's team is getting the jump drive primed and the engines warmed up, but they're as ill as you - the engineers that is, not the engines - and I don't have enough pills for everybody, so they're going a bit slower than usual."

"What about the skeleton crew? Why didn't they warn us earlier or better yet, get us going?"

"They were found passed out this morning in the cafeteria."

"Great. There's going to be a talk when this is all over that no-one will like. What about Gregorii? Is he ready to fly us out of here?"

"Yes, he's at his station ready to jump us out as soon as possible." He then added quietly, "I offered him one of my hangover cures, but he's got the constitution of an elephant or something as he says he hasn't got a hangover. The weird thing is, I think he's telling the truth."

"Yeah, he's always been a good drinker."

I didn't have time to say anything else as we arrived at the bridge and Sam went to find me some coffee. I sank into my chair in the centre of the room, noting with some pride that everyone was doing their jobs quickly and efficiently and there wasn't any sign of panic. As I looked around the bridge, I noticed that even the normally straight-laced Dice was looking worse for wear after the previous night. As I saw her, an ensign stopped and leant on the table beside her, grinning. He received a glare and she muttered something in return that made him go very pale and scurry away.

I continued my scan of the bridge but nothing leapt out at me as particularly urgent or requiring my input, so I leant back in the chair and picked up my pen to keep my fingers busy. After a few moments, Sam returned and offered something that smelled vaguely like coffee. "Why is there a golf club in the ceiling?" I asked.

He looked up. "Huh, I have no idea," he said, looking at the mangled remains of the golf club half buried in the ceiling. His name was called then, so he then pushed the mug into my hand and headed for the comms room.

I slowly sat up, took a sip of the not-coffee and asked for an update to our situation.

"Engines are online and I'll be ready to fire up the jump drive in a couple of minutes," Goss reported from the engine room.

"Comms are up but we've not heard anything from Zarek since yesterday. I've sent out a distress signal and tried to contact the reinforcements that are meant to be on the way, but we've got nothing back yet." Sam called from the comms room.

"I can fly this bucket, but we're not going anywhere fast until we get that jump drive on," Gregorii said. "If we could only blink, I could get us out of here, but we don't even have that."

"We're working on it alright?" Goss said hotly.

"The important thing is," Dice interjected, holding an ice pack to her head, "we have defences and some movement, which we can use if necessary."

"I think moving is kind of necessary, Dice," Gregorii drawled.

Dice glared at him, "Don't call me that, Durov." His grin was visible through his beard before he looked away.

"Alright Gregorii, get us facing them. No sense making ourselves a bigger target than necessary."

"Yes, captain." He turned back to his console and began to manoeuvre the enormous ship.

"As soon as you can, jump us out of here." He nodded. "Di- sorry, Caplan, work out a backup plan we can use until the jump drive comes online." She nodded, paling at the sudden movement, and started working.

"Goss," I called.

"Yeah?"

"How long until the jump drive's ready?"

"Another couple of minutes captain."

"You said that a minute ago, get it done."

"Yes, captain." He sounded so pitiful I felt like I'd kicked a puppy, again.

"Captain!" Someone screamed, "they've opened fire!"

"Everybody brace for impact!" I yelled into the PA system as the klaxons changed from a steady ringing to a piercing wail.

Of the three shots fired, only one missed. The other two smashed into our ship with such incredible force we felt a tremor in the bridge and heard the screech of tortured metal. For several seconds we feared the ship was going to tear itself apart, but the screeches quickly faded and left behind a deafening silence.

"Is everyone alright?" I asked quietly. There was a mumbled chorus that I took for yes along with many nodding heads. I turned on the PA and asked for a status report.

"We've got a few wounded and engine one is on fire, we're shutting it down and sealing it off now but we don't know how far the fire will spread," an unfamiliar voice said.

"How were the engines hit, I thought we were facing them? Where's Goss? Can we use the jump drive?"

The engineer on the other end sounded terrified but managed to stammer out, "One of the shots must have got lucky and hit further back and, er, Goss has been taken to the infirmary, he's hurt pretty bad. As for the jump drive, well, it's not damaged and we can use it, but only for a short time."

"Why?" I demanded, afraid of the answer.

"We'd have to shut down everything to power it, including life support," he said nervously.

I thought for a moment in silence, very aware that everyone was watching me. I'd heard of ships that had survived turning off everything to make a jump, but I wasn't sure how well we would do. I looked at the screen and saw the USR ships as they slowed and formed a firing line. "Get it ready. When I give the order, we'll fire everything we have and then jump. The flack should give us a few seconds to cover our escape and Gregorii will get us as far as he can. We'll just have to hope it's enough. "

"Yes, captain," the engineer replied in a tiny voice.

Dice stepped forward, "why don't we just abandon ship? We can't win this fight."

I looked her in the eyes. "Because we can survive this. A few seconds without life support won't kill us, but those ships will. I'm pretty sure they're gunning for revenge and if we take the escape pods now they may still kill us all. If they don't, we'll instead be stranded here with nowhere to go as the Zarek outpost will be destroyed." She frowned and I could see the rest of the crew weren't happy either. "Look, we killed three USR ships yesterday. Even if the Sniper wasn't part of their squadron, we'd have a kill order on us now. Besides, this is war and I don't think either side are too bothered with taking prisoners. But, if anyone wants to take their chances in a pod, that's fine by me. I won't think any lesser of you for it but you'd better hurry as we don't have much time."

No-one moved.

"OK then, let's do this."

Everyone was looking a bit shocked, but slowly dispersed to do their jobs.

"Captain!" I jumped and looked around the room trying to find the person calling, desperately hoping it wasn't our death knell. "Captain!" I looked behind me to see Sam squeezing through the crew. "Captain!" He called.

"What is it?" I asked.

"They're hailing us, do you want to answer?" He hid it well, but I could tell he was worried. So I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile and asked him to put it on the main screen.

When the static cleared, the man on the other side looked at us as if he was examining something on a dissection table. He appeared to be a middle-aged man with grey only starting to grace his jet black hair and beard, but in reality I knew he was nearing his sixties. His eyes were dark and brooding, hiding a cold and iron-hard soul. The many wrinkles on his face didn't make him look old, they just made him look weathered and tough. I knew this person as Evan Sterling, a dangerous man who haunted some of my worst nightmares. Everyone else knew him as the notorious pirate, renegade and mercenary, Sterling Blackmane.

Yeah, not the most imaginative name but he makes it work.

When he saw me, a smug little smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Why hello little Mary, what a surprise to see you here," he said.

"Evan, what's an old renegade like you doing in a USR ship?" I said with false cheer, "it doesn't even look stolen."

"Ha! That's a good one but no, this actually isn't stolen. I have you know that I am now Captain Sterling of the USR First Exploratory Fleet."

"Your mother would be so proud if she was alive to see you now. How did she die again? Sudden death syndrome was it?"

"Oh, that's a low blow, even for you Mary." That damn smirk was still there, it was infuriating how calm he was. "What's a good little captain like you doing all the way out here, away from all the fighting? Are you getting soft in your old age?"

"You're one to talk," I retorted, "You're finally starting to show your age."

He tsked, "now you're just getting petty." He turned to look at someone off-screen and frowned at whatever they were saying. When he turned back to us, he looked annoyed and sighed but the smirk quickly returned. "It seems we're on a schedule, I'm going to have to keep this short. We are ready to fire, your ship is crippled and you have nowhere to go. We accept your surrender."

I will admit that at that moment I did consider ignoring my mighty speech and surrendering to save myself. But as I looked at him, I remembered what his crew had been subjected to during my last encounter with him and shuddered at the thought of what prisoners might go through. So I gave the eloquent reply, "Fuck your surrender."

Finally his smirk vanished as he stared at me. I tried not to flinch under that gaze and glared back.

"You've got spirit, I'll give you that, but it won't save you." He turned away slightly and said to someone offscreen, "destroy them."

Fortunately, I had had first-hand experience with his negotiation and combat tactics, which is why as soon as he looked away I gave the signal to start our escape before he'd finished giving his order.

Time seemed to slow then. I saw Evan look at us in surprise. I saw Gregorii's hands fly over the controls but the ship moved so slowly I feared we weren't moving at all. I saw the shots exploding from the ends of the Sniper's guns and begin speeding towards us. Gregorii's quick reactions saved us from immediate death as the shots smashed into and through our armour but they didn't destroy us. I thought I heard a growing whine join the background noise, but I didn't have time to listen as I was shouting orders for damage control whilst Gregorii began enacting the next stage of our plan.

The two Snipers accompanying Evan then fired, hammering into us seconds later but by then we were starting to gather speed and avoided fiery death yet again, although I wasn't sure how much longer we could survive.

Then a voice cut through the din, screeching over the PA system, "the jump drive's damaged! It's going to blow! Abandon ship! Abandon sh-"

There was a short, sharp pain, then everything faded away to nothing.


End file.
